It is common to provide an electrical contact having resilient contact fingers with a protective sleeve secured around the contact fingers. The protective sleeve provides protection for the resilient fingers against sideways forces and also protects the resilient fingers against overstress during mating with a pin contact. Often this sleeve is secured over a cylindrical base portion of the contact and is secured by crimping a back end of the sleeve around the central cylindrical base portion.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,516,310 shows a socket terminal having a cylindrical base portion with resilient contact fingers and a sleeve secured over the contact fingers. The sleeve has a series of dimples and the base portion of the contact has a series of grooves. The sleeve is received onto the contact so that the dimples are received within the grooves thereby securing the sleeve to the contact.
One problem that occurs in the prior art contact assemblies is that when the sleeve is secured to the contact the resilient fingers can be pushed out of proper alignment during the securing process. Other problems that occur are that the sleeve and the contact fingers are not properly aligned with each other or that the gap between the resilient fingers can be changed. What is needed is a sleeve which can be secured over the resilient fingers to the base of the contact without jarring or moving the resilient fingers thereby insuring that they are properly aligned within the sleeve and that the sleeve is properly aligned with the resilient fingers.